Kathryn Curran writes “I just listened to your Selling on a 2” x 4” webinar and was amazed by your depth of knowledge.  We now have 21 people on our mobile team and if we had hired you before we started we would have saved countless dollars and days.  The thing that I didn’t quite understand was that you kept repeating ‘sell where the user wants to be sold.’ That seems like common sense.  Am I missing something?”

Hi Kathryn:

On F-Commerce. 

Over the phone.

Through text messaging.

Via email.

In a bricks and mortar location.

At your website.

In live chat.

Over V-chat.

Sell where the user wants to be sold IS indeed common sense.  Unfortunately, many folks don’t have it when it comes to this point.

The thing about mobile that is much different from regular ecommerce or online lead generation* is that there’s a bigger chance that you WILL NOT get the lead/order on a mobile device than you will.

When you foray into mobile, you’ve automatically entered into the world of multi-step marketing (unfortunately it’s not the same as multi-level otherwise I’d have pink Cadillacs to promise you.)

Someone goes to your mobile site and then what?  What do they do next?  What are the steps of the sale?  As you figure them out, you’ll find that people who come to your site from the Facebook app on their Droid may want to be sold on Facebook and not on your regular site.  (Not always but a possibility.  Trump Hotels is a good example of someone who is doing this kinda-sorta-a-little-bit-right.) 

A person who comes in direct/no referrer and clicks on the call button may want to be sold through video chat or over the phone immediately.  This is a basic, but important, point as right now a lot of call center reps only get trained one way (i.e., to help lead people through the website – and not to take the order directly, which is NOT a good thing.) 

Folks who use your store locator are likely headed to one of your stores, so the transactions will typically be completed there.  

If you know the user has propensity to buy/act and you know it’s in a specific place, you can change your marketing methods to accommodate them.  You may ask the guy who uses the store locator to enter his email address so he can get an instant savings download coupon to use in the store.   I’m not suggesting you should give people money for nothing – although e-mail addresses are valuable – however, you might want to try giving them a coupon for a higher dollar average order.  (If you normally have a $100 average order, you could try $10 off $150.) If you don’t want to give a discount, maybe they can get a freebie when they come in. 

How do you figure out where folks want to be sold?  Lots of testing and more important, really delving into your stats: looking at EXACTLY what the users are doing by AC (aggregated click) and then following through the typical user path of that batch of users.  It actually sounds much more dramatic and complicated than it is but to start just pick a couple unique actions and follow those through.  It’s fun, easy and you’ll undoubtedly increase your conversion almost immediately.

Have a mobile question you’d like answered?  Click here now or email me at info@amyafrica.com.

*For all you folks who don’t do ecommerce but do lead generation, you “sell” too.  In the user’s mind, you are constantly selling them.  Why?  Easy.  Their information has a market value – I mean, if you want it, it’s worth something, right?  Whenever something has market value, and a trade is made, a transaction or “sale” has taken place.